Technique for automatically tracking an object

ABSTRACT

Automatic tracking by a camera ( 16 ) of an object ( 12 ) such as on-air talent appearing in a television show commences by first determining whether the object lies within the camera field of view matches a reference object. If so, tracking of the object then occurs to maintain the object in fixed relationship to a pre-set location in the camera&#39;s field of view, provided the designated object has moved more than a threshold distance from the pre-set location.

CROSS REFERENCE INFORMATION

This application claims priority under 35 U.S.C. 119(e) to U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 61/124,094, filed 14 Apr. 4008, the teachings of which are incorporated herein.

TECHNICAL FIELD

This invention relates to a technique for tracking an object whose image is captured by a camera or the like.

BACKGROUND ART

Live production of a television program such as a news show often requires one or more television cameras to capture the image of different “on-air” talent, such as a news anchor, weather reporter and/or sports reporter. In the past, a camera operator would manually operate each television camera. Such manual operation often entailed moving the camera to different positions within a television studio to make sure that the particular on-air talent appeared in the center of the camera's field of view. During broadcasting, the on-air talent often will make slight lateral movements, forcing the camera operator to displace the camera by a corresponding amount to maintain the on-air talent within the center of the camera's field of view. The camera operator will generally observe the image of the on-air talent in the camera's view finder so the operator will have immediate knowledge of the movement of the talent and move the camera accordingly.

Advances in technology have led to the development of robotic television cameras, such as the “Cameraman”, available from Thomson Grass Valley, Jacksonville, Fla. Such robotic cameras operate under the control of one or more computers which manage functions such as camera displacement along the x, y, and z axes, pan, tilt, zoom and focus. By appropriately programming the computer(s), the camera will operate automatically, thus obviating the need for manual control. Typical robotic cameras have the ability to move from a known home position to one or more pre-set positions, each pre-set position enabling a particular camera shot of an on-air talent. Generally, the pre-set camera positions remain static. In other words, if the on-air talent moves even slightly to the right or left while the robotic camera remains static, then the on-air talent will appear off-center within the field of view of the camera.

To overcome this difficulty, robotic cameras can include automatic tracking technology such as such the tracking system described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,668,629 issued in the name of Jeffrey Parker et al. The automatic tracking system described in the '629 patent employs a Infra-Red (IR) transmitter carried by the moving object (e.g., the on-air talent) for transmitting signals to an IR receiver carried by the robotic camera. By detecting the deviation in the signal transmitted by the transmitter as it moves with the object, the IR receiver can establish the new position of the moving object and provide that information to the computer(s) controlling the robotic camera to displace the camera accordingly.

The IR tracking technology described in the '629 patent works well for tracking a single moving object. However, tracking of multiple objects can prove problematic, such as in the case when a single robotic camera serves to capture the image of several different on-air talent, as occurs when the camera moves to capture the image of a news anchor at one instant, and a weather reporter at a different instant. Each different on-air talent would need to carry a separate IR transmitter to avoid interference, thus necessitating the need for multiple IR receivers on the camera. This IR system also suffers from the disadvantage that the anchor person has to wear an embedded system that should be located at the center of the head to have an accurate estimate of the head position

Thus, a need exists for a tracking technique that overcomes the aforementioned disadvantage of the prior art.

BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Briefly, in accordance with a preferred embodiment, there is provided a method for tracking an object within the field of view of a robotically controlled camera. The method commences by first determining whether the object lying within the camera field of view matches a reference object. If so, tracking of the object commences to maintain the object in fixed relationship to a pre-set location in the camera's field of view, provided the designated object has moved more than a threshold distance from the pre-set location. In this way, tracking occurs in accordance with the camera's field of view, and does not depend on any apparatus worn by the object being tracked.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 depicts a block schematic diagram of an exemplary system for practicing the automatic tracking technique of the present principles;

FIG. 2 depicts a Graphical User Interface (GUI) through which an operator can control the system of FIG. 1

FIG. 3 depicts an enlarged portion of the of the GUI of FIG. 2 showing the manner in which an operator can manipulate a camera offset; and

FIG. 4 depicts in flow chart form the steps of a method practiced by the apparatus of FIG. 1 for performing automatic tracking technique of the present principles.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

FIG. 1 depicts a block schematic diagram of an exemplary system 10 for automatically tracking an object 12, such as on-air talent, in accordance with the present principles. The on-air talent 12 could take the form of a newscaster, sports reporter, or weatherman in connection with a production of a television news program, or on-air talent in connection with other types of television programming (e.g., a game show host).

The system 10 includes a robotic camera assembly 14, such as the “Camerman” robotic camera assembly available from Thomson Grass Valley, Jacksonville, Fla. The robotic camera assembly 14 typically includes a television camera 16 that carries a zoom lens 18 whose functions, such as iris and zoom, respond to signals supplied by a processor 20, such as but not limited to, a personal computer or the like. Thus, the lens 18 has a variable zoom function. The processor 20 also controls a robotic camera pedestal 22 which has the capability of displacing the camera 16 along the x, and y axes as well as panning and tilting the camera responsive to signals from the processor. The processor 20 operates to control the movement of the robotic camera pedestal 22 as well as the functions of the lens 18 in accordance with the video signal from the camera 16. Although the robotic camera system 14 depicts a single camera 16, the system could include multiple cameras controlled by a single processor or by individual processors.

FIG. 2 depicts a display of a Graphical User Interface (GUI) 200 via which an operator enters data to, and receives information from, a program executed by the processor 20 to carry out automatic tracking of an object (e.g., the on-air talent 12 of FIG. 1) in the manner described hereinafter. The GUI 200 of FIG. 2 includes a video screen 202 which displays the image of a selected television camera, such as the camera 16 of FIG. 1. The image displayed in the video screen 202 includes horizontal and vertical lines 204 a and 204 b, whose intersection 206 represent an offset associated with the tracking technique of the present principles. The offset constitutes the difference in position between the center of the object (e.g., the on-air talent 12 of FIG. 1) and the intersection 206 of the lines 204 a and 204 b. An operator can manipulate the location of the lines 204 a and 204 b by touching and dragging the lines to manipulate the offset. The video screen 202 also displays a “safe zone box”, in the form of a border 208 which defines the region within which automatic tracking occurs. No tracking occurs for any object appearing outside the border 208. Thus, if the on-air 12 of FIG. 1 appears outside of the border 208, the camera 16 will not respond to movement of the on-air talent.

In addition to the video screen 202, the GUI 200 includes a plurality of “toggle buttons” 210-224, each taking the form of a particular region within the GUI, which when activated, triggers a particular action as described hereinafter. In practice, actuation of a particular one of the toggle buttons 210-224 can occur by the use of a computer mouse (not shown). Alternatively, the GUI 200 could undergo display on a touch screen so that touching the particular toggle button would trigger the corresponding action associated with that button. The toggle button 210 triggers selection of a particular one of several cameras, whereas the toggle button 212 selects a preset shot for the camera selected by the toggle button 210. Toggle button 214 triggers an edit capability to allow the operator to adjust various parameters, including but not limited to the speed of camera movement. In this way, the operator can adjust the sensitivity of the automatic tracking. Toggle button 216 triggers a new tracking session. Toggle button 218 triggers a save of the various settings and other information associated with a current tracking session, including but not limited to related safe zone settings for particular preset camera locations. Toggle button 218 enables automatic tracking of an object (e.g., the on-air talent 12 of FIG. 1) in accordance with the method of the present principles. Toggle button 240 enables creation of a safe zone defined by the border 208 to define a region outside of which no tracking will occur. Toggle button 222, when actuated, initiates automatic tracking, by entering into an “auto find” mode, whereupon the processor 20 of FIG. 1 will search the currently selected camera's field of view for a suitable object to begin tracking. Toggle button 222 automatically enables both automatic tracking and the Safe Zone without operator intervention. Lastly, toggle button 224, when actuated, triggers a help screen to assist the operator.

The GUI 200 advantageously enables an operator to set a tracking window (i.e., the border 208) as well as setting of x and y offsets (as defined the intersection 206 of the lines 204 a and 204 b in FIG. 2). In this way, the operator can maintain the object (the on-air talent 12 of FIG. 1) in a particular perspective, depending on graphics that appear in the same field of view as the on-air talent. For example, the graphics could appear over the right or left shoulder of the on-air talent 12 of FIG. 1, as indicated in the image depicted in the video screen 202 of FIG. 2, resulting in a “right OTS” or “left OTS” shot. Upon operator selection of the automatic tracking function following actuation of the auto track toggle button 218, the video screen 202 within the GUI 200 will display the image of the camera 16 of FIG. 1 with the current position of the offset. As described previously, the operator can make adjustments by touching the lines 204 a and 204 b and dragging them to the desired location. After saving the position of the lines 204 a and 204 b as a preset, the intersection 206 now becomes the x and y offset associated with that particular location preset. The camera 16 of FIG. 1 will track the object (e.g., the on-air talent 12 of FIG. 1) and re-adjust the position of the camera based on the difference between the stored offset and the location preset without operator intervention. FIG. 3 represents an enlarged view of the video screen 202 of FIG. 2 and more clearly depicts a tracking window having an “offset” from the center of the object in the field of view of the camera 16 of FIG. 1.

FIG. 4 depicts in flow chart form the steps of an exemplary process 400 by which the processor 20 of FIG. 1 can control the robotic camera assembly 14 of FIG. 1 to carry out automatic tracking of the on-air talent 12 of FIG. 1 in accordance with the present principles. The auto-tracking method 400 commences by first executing step 402 to create or re-set an object for tracking. Initial execution of step 400 serves to create an “empty” object. For tracking purposes, an object possesses certain characteristics, such as a shape and location as well as certain content-based characteristics, such as color and feature points for example.

Initially, all of the object characteristics have zero values.

Execution of step 400 also serves to reset the position of the camera 16 of FIG. 1 in the x, y and z coordinate to locate the camera to a pre-defined (e.g., a pre-set) position. Similarly, the pan, tilt, zoom and iris are set to pre-defined values.

Following step 402, execution of step 404 occurs whereupon the processor 20 detects the object (e.g., the on-air talent 12 of FIG. 1) by comparing characteristics of the image (e.g., color feature points etc.) in a current video frame captured by camera 16 of FIG. 1 to a stored image of the object. Upon detecting the object (which occurs when the characteristics of the captured frame substantially matches the corresponding characteristics of the stored image), the processor 20 executes step 406 to determine stability of the object. Upon failing to detect the object, step 404 undergoes re-execution upon capture of the next video frame. In practice, step 404 will undergo re-execution to detect the object for a succession of captured video frames until reaching a time-out interval to avoid the execution of an endless loop. Although not shown in FIG. 2, an operator could intervene at this point to either continue object detection, or end the process.

Tracking of the object (i.e., displacement of the camera) generally requires that the object remain stable. In other words, the object should not undergo significant motion when attempting automatic tracking. Attempting automatic tracking while the object undergoes significant motion could result in movement of the camera 20 to a location from which the object has already moved, which could lead to the camera 16 of FIG. 1 “chasing” the object. To avoid such a possibility, the operator will typically select an interval during which the object must remain generally at the same position before the processor 20 will initiate movement of the camera 16 of FIG. 1. If the object generally substantially motionless for the specified interval, then the object remains stable for purposes of determining stability during step 406. The object stabilization step occurs because at the initial step the camera moves in open loop (i.e. no images are processed during this time). This initial displacement can take one second or more to reach the desired preset position (the zoom command is not that fast) and when the camera finally converges to this position the object that was still moving can be far away from this position leading to an object tracking failure or to a new very important camera displacement that is not the behavior desired.

If the processor 20 of FIG. 1 finds the object stable during step 406, then the processor displaces the camera 16 of FIG. 1 to the desired pre-set position, and likewise commands the lens 18 of FIG. 1 to zoom to a desired pre-set position during step 408. The operator can change these parameters using the preset modification ability available in the GUI 200 of FIG. 2. For each preset, the operator can modify the location of center of the captured image and image size. The operator can also change the preset using the preset selector of the GUI 200. During step 410, processor 20 updates the object characteristics and resets the object position counter used for stability determination purposes to zero. In particular, the processor 20 of FIG. 1 updates the object characteristics by establishing the position of the object in the current image. The object's characteristics include its shape, for example a rectangle or an ellipse). Using the shape information, the processor 20 extracts content-based characteristics for tracking the object. In the event of an inability to detect object stability during step 406, then process execution branches back to step 404.

Following step 410, the processor 20 of FIG. 1 executes step 412 to detect whether object tracking occurs with sufficient confidence. Object tracking occurs with sufficient confidence when the actual position of the object as detected from its characteristics lies with a given probability of its expected position, denoting the tracking confidence. An example of a tracking technique suitable for tracking objects exists in pending PCT application PCT/EP08/061842 filed 08 Sep. 2008, incorporated by reference herein. If the tracking confidence equals or exceeds a given threshold, the processor 20 of FIG. 1 assumes successful tracking and then proceeds to execute step 418 to test convergence. Otherwise, if the tracking confidence does not equal or exceed the threshold, then the processor 20 assumes the object to be lost.

Under such circumstances, process execution branches to step 414 to look for the object, using the position of the object in the previous frame as a reference position. The processor 20 looks for the object throughout the overall image, typically in a random manner by enlarging image sampling. A check then occurs during step 416 to determine whether the object has been found. To determine if it has found the object, the processor 20 checks whether the distance between the object characteristics and the object candidate characteristics remains lower than half of the tracking confidence. If so, then process execution branches back to step 412 to check for successful tracking. Otherwise, step 414 undergoes re-execution until the processor 20 of FIG. locates the object. To avoid an endless loop, the process 400 could time out after a given interval in the absence of not finding the object. Note that the operator can change the tracking confidence in real time via the GUI 200 of FIG. 2.

Upon execution of step 418 of FIG. 4, the processor 20 of FIG. 1 determines convergence by determining if the position of the object corresponds to the desired pre-set position. At each instant in time, the object will have a convergence state, either TRUE or FALSE, depending on whether the distance between the actual position of the object and the desired pre-set position does not exceed a threshold value. Initially, the object has a FALSE convergent state. Upon detecting a FALSE convergent state, the processor 20 launches a test of convergence. If convergence state remains FALSE when checked during step 418, then step 420 undergoes execution, whereupon the processor 20 causes the camera 16 to move to a selected preset position. The processor 20 can separately control the pan and tilt speed, with the direction determined by using different values for pan and tilt speed. An operator can change the magnitude of the camera speed via the GUI 200 of FIG. 2.

To avoid the possibility of shaking caused by the camera 16 of FIG. 1 rapidly moving back and forth over a short distance during tracking, the processor 20 performs a tolerance check during step 422 following a determination during step 418 of a TRUE convergence state. During step 422, the processor 20 checks for tolerance by making use of a tolerance radius about each preset position. If the distance between the desired pre-set position and the current object position remains less than the tolerance radius, then no further movement of the camera 16 of FIG. 1 becomes necessary and the process ends at step 424. Otherwise, if the object (e.g., the on-air talent 12 of FIG. 1) lies outside the tolerance radius, then the processor 20 resets the convergence state to FALSE and step 420 undergoes re-execution to move the camera 16 to match object position and desired preset position.

The foregoing describes a technique for automatically tracking an object. 

1. A method for tracking an object in field of view of a robotically controlled camera, comprising the steps of: determining if the object lies within the region of interest matches a reference object; and if so, automatically tracking the object to maintain the object in a fixed relationship relative to a location in the camera field of view if the object has moved more that a threshold distance from the location.
 2. The method according to claim 1 wherein the step of determining a match between the object and reference object includes the step of comparing at least one characteristic of the object to at least one corresponding characteristic of the reference object.
 3. The method according to claim 1 wherein the automatic tracking includes the step of determining whether a captured image of the object remains stable.
 4. The method according to claim 3 wherein the step of determining whether the object remains stable further comprises the step of detecting whether the object has moved during a prescribed interval.
 5. The method according to claim 1 wherein the automatic tracking further includes the step of displacing the camera to a pre-set position when the camera pre-set position and location of the object do not lie within a threshold distance from each other.
 6. The method according to claim 5 further comprising the step of ceasing camera movement when the camera pre-set position lies within a tolerance radius of the actual object position.
 7. Apparatus for tracking an object comprising: means for determining if the object lying within the region of interest matches a reference object; means for detecting if the object has moved more than a threshold distance from the pre-set location and means for automatically tracking the object when determined to be in the region of interest to maintain the object in a fixed relationship relative to a pre-set location in the camera field of view if the object has moved more than a threshold distance from the pre-set location.
 8. Apparatus for tracking an object comprising: a camera for acquiring an image of the object; means for displacing the camera to track the image; and a processor for controlling the means for displacing the camera in accordance with the camera image by (1) determining if the object lying within the region of interest matches a reference object and if so, displacing the camera to track the image when the object is when determined to be in the region of interest, provided the object has moved more that a threshold distance from the pre-set location. 